what products are triclosan used in?

Ironically, with Triclosan’s widespread use in antibacterial soaps and related products, the only area in which it has shown to be effective is in the fight against gingivitis. The chemical is currently being used in these products:

Colgate Total®; Breeze™ Triclosan Mouthwash

Reach® Antibacterial Toothbrush

Janina Diamond Whitening Toothpaste

If you are using the products, then we recommend that you consider using other toothpastes that do not have this ingredient in place. Depending on the company creating the product, Triclosan can also be branded as Microban® Additive B, Irgasan® (DP 300 or PG 60), Biofresh®, Lexol-300, Ster-Zac or Cloxifenolum. Some soaps will use triclocarban in place of triclosan.

While long-term research in humans is lacking, several studies of the effects of triclosan in mice and rats found adverse health effects at high concentrations, including reduced fertility and increased cancer risk. But it’s difficult to say if these results would translate into humans, especially because we’ve been exposed to triclosan in various products for decades. Recent headlines with phrases like “cancer-causing chemical” or “cancer-linked ingredient” are overhyped and fail to account for this.

And while any link with cancer probably sounds scary, it’s important to keep in mind that the compound is in the toothpaste for a reason: It helps fight gingivitis, a common disease that causes inflammation and bleeding of the gums.

Do the benefits that triclosan provides in Colgate Total toothpaste outweigh the risks? Or should you throw it in the trash and switch to Crest, which is advertised as 100% triclosan free?

This risk-benefit analysis poses very personal questions, and we can’t say for sure if you should switch, but here’s what we do know about triclosan.

What is triclosan?

Triclosan is an antimicrobial agent, meaning that it helps to “slow or stop the growth of bacteria, fungi, and mildew,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It first started to appear in antibacterial hand soap products in the 1970s.

Since then, triclosan has been added to a ton of things — “it has been used in consumer products such as detergents, soaps, skin cleansers, deodorants, lotions, creams, toothpastes, and dishwashing liquids,” according to a CDC fact sheet. Many of those products labeled with “antibacterial” potentially contain triclosan or a related compound.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, has never issued a comprehensive ruling on triclosan’s effectiveness and safety — even though it originally said it would look into triclosan in 1974. Now, the FDA says it will issue a ruling on triclosan in 2016.

But because of consumer concerns about safety and environmental impacts, triclosan has been phased out of many soap products because of mounting evidence that these products don’t provide health benefits above regular soap and water.

Tests in animals have raised some red flags. For example, one study found that triclosan promoted breast cancer in cells in the lab and in mice. Another study found that exposure to triclosan during fetal development caused neurological damage in some rats.

But it is important to recognize that chemicals can affect animals differently from humans, and animal testing can involve sky-high doses of the chemical in question. However, these kinds of findings in animals mean further testing is warranted before the product is approved for humans.

Direct affects of the chemical on your body are not the only concerns about the additive. In the mid-2000s, environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, started to raise concerns that the inclusion of triclosan in soaps might be contributing to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria, which can cause dangerous infections that are hard to treat. Because soaps get washed down the drain and eventually end up in water systems, the group also found that triclosan could disrupt the algae and wildlife found in water ecosystems. For example, Canadian scientists found that exposure to triclosan caused developmental issues in bullfrogs.

What are the benefits?

According to Colgate’s website: “Reviews by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the American Dental Association, and government agencies around the world confirm triclosan’s safe use in toothpaste and recognize that Colgate Total provides an important health benefit.”

The website also says the “safety and effectiveness” of the product is supported by more than 80 scientific studies, involving 19,000 people.

Colgate did not return our request for comment. (We will update this post if we hear back.)

What’s the bottom line?

So, should you throw away your tube of Colgate Total? Basically, that’s up to you.

If the results of these animal trials scare you, or if you are worried about triclosan seeping into the environment, and you don’t have gingivitis, you might want to switch toothpastes. But, the current FDA stance is that “triclosan is not known to be hazardous to humans” and that there is not “sufficient safety evidence” to recommend that consumers stop using products containing triclosan.

Once again it’s important to reiterate that often in studies, animals are given very high doses of a chemical relative to the actual levels that humans would consume. So unless you plan on eating a whole tube of Colgate Total (not recommended for other reasons), you will probably be fine. And also, before you switch to a “natural” toothpaste, you might want to know that Tom’s of Maine happens to be a subsidiary of Colgate-Palmolive Co.

“It’s not a new thing. It’s been around for a long time,” Quammen said. Bubonic plague jumped from rodents to humans through infected fleas and killed as much as 60 percent of Europe in the 14th century.

And Ebola is not the first species to spill over from apes.

The most lethal species of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, came from gorillas, according to research Walsh co-authored.

Into the woods

But the pace of spillover seems to be increasing, Quammen said.

“Something seems to be different because we’ve seen a lot of these new diseases, especially viral diseases, emerging over the last five or six decades. And that, of course, raises the question of, why?”

One answer, Quammen said, is the growing human population that is encroaching deeper and deeper into new habitats.

“There are now 7 billion of us on the planet. We’re going into these diverse ecosystems. We’re cutting down trees, we’re building mines and roads.”

And as humans encounter the animals living in these ecosystems, he added, “We’re giving the viruses those animals carry the opportunity to jump to a new host.”

William Karesh, an infectious disease expert at EcoHealth Alliance, said, “It’s becoming very clear that there’s a strong correlation between environmental change of any type and disease emergence.

“Whether it’s deforestation or agricultural growth or reforestation, it’s that change that allows that disease to emerge because it’s disrupting the natural balance,” Karesh said.

Spilling back

Spillover goes in the other direction, too.

Ecotourism has been great for protecting wild-ape habitat, ecologist Walsh said. But “in the places where we’re succeeding the most in protecting them from hunting and habitat loss,” he noted, “we’re killing them with our viruses.”

Human respiratory viruses are the No. 1 killer of chimpanzees and gorillas that are accustomed to the presence of humans. In chimpanzees, half of the deaths are caused by human respiratory viruses.

Walsh advocates vaccinating apes that come in contact with tourists against human diseases such as measles.

He and his colleagues call for better enforcement of the laws against hunting the critically endangered western lowland gorilla, and better protection of their dwindling habitat.